OpenMoko Freerunner - Free your Phone

Neo FreeRunner is an open source cell phone which is designed to run Openmoko software and is the direct descendant of the earlier FIC Neo1973. Its a Linux-based touch screen smart phone with all the specs of a killer device. A very high resolution touch screen (1.7" x 2.27" - 43mm x 58mm) 480x640 pixels, 128MB SDRAM memory (Expandable), Internal GPS module, 802.11 b/g WiFi, 400Mhz processor, 2 3D accelerometers, helps switching to landscape mode automatically, Tri-band GSM and GPRS for North America (850/1800/1900 Mhz) and the rest of the world (900/1800/1900 Mhz), USB Host function with 500mA power allowing you to power USB devices, etc.

Openmoko is a project founded by Taiwanese computer and components manufacturer First International Computer, Inc. (FIC), which aims at developing an open source Linux based operating system designed for mobile phones. The open access of the phone's software, under the General Public License, started a new trend in the mobile phone industry, following which Google came up with their own platform called Android.

Using the OpenMoko platform, developers can modify the software's function and appearance. The software package will allow third-party applications to be written and compiled for it using C/C++. The computer-aided design (CAD) files for the hardware are freely available under a creative commons license for designers to modify.

The only thing missing from the package is a camera. But who knows, the modders/hackers/developers would soon come up with an hack to add a custom camera. Yes, that's the beauty of open source, its YOUR phone in a true sense and you can customize it to suit your needs.

Its priced at $399 (plus taxes) and is available to be purchased from their online store or local distributors in a few countries (including India). Going by the reviews on the internet, this phone isn't ready for the primetime yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it beats the market leaders (read iPhone) in a few months from now. I am a member of Motorola Linux Development Community motorolafans.com and people have come up with some amazing mods and software for the Motorola phones, which hasn't revealed the source for OS, or doesn't have an SDK. Now, with all the source available, these guys would do wonders with this little baby, where they can take control over each aspect of the phone. (A few of them have already ported the Openmoko to their A780,A1200,E6 and E680.If you are interested to know more about this click here.)

It would be interesting to see the innovation this new openness would being to the mobile phone technology. I'm already excited...

Pre-Register your iPhone in India

For all of you who have been waiting for an official iPhone launch in India, there is a good news and a bad news. The good news is that Airtel and Vodafone has officially announced that they would be bringing in the iPhone here and have started to take pre registration requests too. You can pre-register here for Airtel and here for Vodafone.

Now, the bad news is, that there isnt any information about the launch date yet. Officals are still keeping mum about the date it would be made avilable. On contrary to my earlier beleif that we would get an unlocked iPhone, it looks like iPhone would actually come locked with the service providers and would make use of the services provided by the respective companies including the 3G services too. And this might actually be a reason for the delay in India, as we do not have 3G spectrum available to be used yet. The talks with TRAI are still on and if all goes well, the 3G services might start in a few selected circles by early next year. Now, this might translate to getting the launch date shifted to next year.

Another issue with the service provider locked iPhones might be the price. We all have been infomred by Apple that an 8Gb iPhone would cost only $499, what we dont know yet is the price of the package from the local service providers on which we would get the deal (iPhone + Service Plan). Logic says that Apple might have reduced the prices as they might make profit throught a revenue sharing system from these service providers in turn. So, iPhone might reach your hands with a similar price tag as the earlier version was or even more.

But all these are speculations at the moment.. and only time would tell which way the tide turns.. lets keep our fingers crossed while we wait for the launch.

MTV Roadies BattleGround - TV meets Web 2.0

MTV in collaboration Orkut has launched a new Reality TV show called MTV Roadies Battleground where contestants would be selected online through Orkut and all the activity would happen online on the official MTV community on the site. The proceedings of the show would also be telecasted on MTV.

MTV Roadies Battle Ground is an Online version of the popular Reality TV Show "MTV Roadies". The original format of the show has about 13 guys and girls selected from all across India through a series of rounds in the audition held at different cities. The participants then have to spend around 40-45 days together, moving from one destination to other on motor bikes. Through the journey, Roadies have to perform different difficult tasks to earn money, to win immunity, or to win advantage during the vote out s. Vote out is happens after each round of tasks and one roadie is sent back home. The Roadie who stands till the end, wins the title and all the cash earned during the journey along with the motorbike he/she has been traveling on. The show has already completed 5 seasons and is hugely popular amongst youth in India and its neighboring countries.

Orkut was recently awarded as the MTV Youth Icon for being the most popular online social networking site in India. The channel had created the community on Orkut for all the fans of the show. All the members in the community can discuss the happenings on the show and put up their opinions. This community too was a big hit and gathered thousands of members in no time. The USP of this community is that the moderators and owner of the community are guys from MTV itself who manage and put up relevant and first hand info on it.

Based on huge popularity of the TV show and the now the community too, the guys at MTV decided to take this a step further. They came up with the concept of having a show similar to Roadies, where all the action would take place in the cyberspace instead of outdoors.

Anyone who wants to participate, will have to create a profile on Orkut and add a little widget for MTV RBG on their profile. An entry form has to be filled and then GDs would happen at the community forum to select the 13 finalists. These finalists with compete with each other to perform some tasks online. The MTV RBG widget will keep you updated of all the action and my guess is that it will have to be used majorly to perform tasks, in case you are one of the finalists.

Orkut has recently added this feature to allow the users to add small applications(widgets) to their profiles and have fun using them with their friends. This concept was made popular by other social networking sites like facebook and myspace. Its picking up on orkut too, but with innovations like MTV RBG, it would reach a new level altogehter.

This marriage of reality TV with internet has been one of its kind in India and I must say this is a brilliant approach in capturing the attention of masses this way. All of the TV channels have their sites set up, and they encourage users to go online and vote for their favorite participants from a lot of other reality shows, but that isn't what i would call a real Web 2.0 approach. MTV RBG, however will truly qualify for that title. Web 2.0 is all about User Generated Content, collaboration, sharing info via different media, easy access to information through different channels and this concept has it all. Thousands of users would be participating online, sharing their stuff with other users, collaborating in real time. It would be an interesting trend to follow. True reality TV true Web 2.0.

Docstoc OneClick : Easiest way to upload and share documents online

Docstoc has recently launched a little utility which helps the users to upload the documents to their docstoc account in a single click. This utility known as "OneClick" can be downloaded and installed on the computer. Three new entries are added to your context menu using which you can upload any document on you computer.



In case you do not want to make your documents available to general public, you can choose to upload the documents as private by selecting the "email as private" option in the context menu. Using "email as public" will make the document appear in the site search results too.

One can select multiple documents to upload them all at once. The total size of selected documents can reach up to 50 Mb. All the document titles would be automatically generated as the upload happens. The uploaded documents will be available under the My Documents folder on the site.

The third option can be used for a normal upload, which lets you edit the document titles and tags for all the selected documents before uploading. You can also mark each document as either private or public through this interface.

One of the ubercool features of this tool is that as soon as your documents are uploaded, it opens up your default email client and prepares the body of the text with the links to the documents you just uploaded. You can then send this email instantly to any of your friends or associates. This would ease out the issues with sending huge email attachments and getting the mailboxes jammed. This utility is also being dubbed as the "Email Attachment Killer" for the same reason. The best part is that you can view the documents on site itself, there is no need to download the document just to view it. You can however download it too, in case you need it offline.

For more information on this feature you can visit docstoc one click.